


Serenity

by Sholio



Category: Iron Fist (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Broken Bones, F/M, Friendship, Gen, Hospitals, Hurt/Comfort, Survival, Trapped
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-25
Updated: 2019-08-25
Packaged: 2020-09-25 01:49:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20368648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: If you were in trouble, the survival manual said, you should stay where you are rather than wandering around and getting lost."Thanks a lot," Ward muttered darkly. "We've got the staying-put part covered, thanks."(Or: Ward and Danny fall down a sinkhole, and Danny breaks hisotherleg.)





	Serenity

**Author's Note:**

  * For [IceQueen1](https://archiveofourown.org/users/IceQueen1/gifts).

> For IceQueen1's prompt "whimper." (And also utilizing the "broken bones" square on my h/c bingo card.)

There was, in Danny's pack, a slim wilderness survival manual. Ward hadn't even known Danny had it. He found it while pulling everything out of both packs and doing a comprehensive inventory, and he read it in small bits while sitting cross-legged in his sleeping bag, rationing flashlight batteries. High overhead, the sky was visible, but it didn't cast enough light down here to read by.

If you were in trouble, the book said, you should stay where you are rather than wandering around and getting lost.

"Thanks a lot," Ward muttered darkly. "We've got the staying-put part covered, thanks."

That was the problem.

*

It had been two days since they'd fallen down a hole, and things were getting worse, because of course things could _always_ get worse.

It was, technically, a sinkhole. Danny had explained this during his periods of lucidity when he wasn't in too much pain to talk, or too feverish to make sense. Ward let him ramble about limestone and geology and caves because it gave them both something to do, and it kept Danny's mind temporarily occupied rather than focused on the pain of two broken legs.

"... I know the hills farther south are riddled with caves, it's a vital part of the tourism industry, but I didn't realize it was something we needed to watch out for this far north ..."

Hindsight was 20/20, but that didn't stop Ward from finding fifty different angles to blame himself, and occasionally Danny, for the mess they were in. Danny had been leading the way, Ward following a few steps behind on the narrow path winding through a mountain forest. When the ground started to crack and collapse underfoot, Danny had flung himself backward, trying to throw Ward out of the way. It hadn't worked, but that was probably why he had ended up landing so badly, rather than being able to roll with the fall in his usual graceful way. Because he'd been trying to save Ward.

Wasn't that just the way things went for them.

But it had sort-of worked. Ward was fine other than a lot of bruises and a wrist he was being very careful with. In all honesty they were both incredibly lucky, though it was hard to keep that in mind when Danny had landed so badly that he'd shattered his good leg and done _something_ to the one with the screwed-in brace.

"Well, at least I'm used to it?" Danny had panted through clenched teeth, white-faced with pain, while Ward stopped in the process of trying to dig them both out and just stared at him in disbelief. "I mean, it's not the first time it's happened? I'm a _veteran_ at broken legs."

"You're an idiot," Ward ground out between clenched teeth, and went on digging.

When he looked up at the little patch of blue sky impossibly high overhead, he guessed they were a couple hundred feet down. A straight fall would have killed them. Instead, they'd ridden an avalanche down, ended up half buried in boulders and small trees, but not smashed to paste as would have been a more plausible result if they'd slipped through and fallen straight down. _That_ was a thought that gave Ward nightmares when he did manage to sleep. Mainly that it could have been Danny, it _would_ have been Danny, vanishing in front of him, slipping through his fingers as Ward tried to grab hold of him and plummeting into the darkness to a lonely death.

Instead they were both stuck at the bottom of a hole, and their injuries were ... well ... not lethal, at least not immediately so, though it was hard to keep that in mind when Danny started going into shock from the broken leg, white and limp and still trying to talk Ward through it, goddammit, even when Danny's teeth were chattering and he wasn't making any sense.

Ward had gotten Danny's pack off and wrapped him up in blankets and then just sat there, in a kind of shock himself. They were at the bottom of a hole and Danny was badly hurt and Ward didn't have a clue, not a single fucking clue how they were going to get out of here.

*

After two days, he'd started to get a little bit of a handle on it. He'd made them, not precisely a _good_ campsite, but at least a kind of flattish campsite on top of the jumble of dirt and boulders. (One thing he had plenty of time for was rearranging rocks, moving sticks, and smoothing out dirt to flatten things.) He emptied their backpacks and did a comprehensive inventory. They had enough food for a couple of weeks if he rationed it, but there was only enough water for three or four days, so no point in being too careful with the food. They had fire-starting materials, even fuel from the trees and sticks and other junk in the landslide, but he was afraid of suffocating them if he tried to make a fire, so that left them with the tiny little camp stove they'd been using to make tea and heat soup, and its limited supply of Sterno. They had their phones, which didn't work down here, so Ward kept them off most of the time and turned on his phone every hour or two to check for a signal, trying to nurse the battery along.

And they had sleeping bags, and first-aid supplies, and a tent in case it rained. It wasn't particularly cold. Several hours after they'd fallen, when Danny's color seemed to be a little better and he was less out of it, Ward had gone ahead and tried to do proper first aid on his leg. He wished immediately that he had done something about it sooner. Danny's pants leg was soaked with blood, and Ward could have gone his _entire life_ without knowing what it looked like when a leg broke badly enough to deform the skin. The other leg was better, at least it was _straight._ Ward used some of their precious water and most of their alcohol wet-wipes to clean up Danny's leg, trying to ignore Danny's awful pained noises (it would have been less horrible if he'd screamed; the little agonized whimpers were going to haunt his dreams). Danny clung to Ward's arm throughout the process and left five neat fingertip-shaped bruises that Ward was careful not to let him see.

And they were still stuck at the bottom of a hole.

And Danny had developed a fever by the second day.

Because of course he had; because Ward hadn't cleaned his leg right away, because he was so scared of accidentally killing Danny through shock and trauma that he'd decided he needed to let Danny recover a little bit and ignored the thing that was _actually_ going to kill him, which was an infected leg. Danny's fever meant they were using up more water and even more of their limited supply of painkillers, since Ward was trying to keep him hydrated and keep his fever down.

"Stop blaming yourself," Danny murmured. "I can sense the self-recrimination from over here."

"Shut up," Ward muttered, and self-recriminated harder.

If Danny wasn't so sick, they could have held out longer. At some point, people were going to notice they were missing. Danny normally talked to Colleen on the phone almost every day. And they'd made reservations at the backpacker's hostel in the village down in the valley for a week after they set out into the mountains, on the general principle that by that time they would have either found the temple they were looking for, or figured out it wasn't there.

If they could have just waited ... okay, so running out of water would have _sucked_ \-- they'd planned on being able to refill their canteens with filtered water in the mountains -- but they could have rationed it, and just tried not to move around too much. The odds still weren't super great, but with Danny this sick, the odds of being able to hold out 'til rescue came, and in particular of _Danny_ being able to hold out, dropped to next to nothing.

If Danny only had the Iron Fist, he could've healed himself, but of course if he had the Iron Fist, they wouldn't be here in the first place. The irony was not lost on Ward, who was a fine connoisseur of the bitter, brutal irony that made up his life.

By the third morning, after Danny had spent a miserably restless and incoherent night and Ward had realized that their water was almost gone, he started making plans. Unfortunately there was no good way to prepare for having to climb two hundred feet with no equipment.

As he went through another careful inventory of their gear, Danny turned to watch him. He looked horrible, pale and sweaty and smudged with dirt, with dark shadows under his eyes. "Ward?"

"Yeah? It's not quite time for your painkillers yet." Ward counted the remaining ones out into his palm. He'd been giving Danny the maximum dosage that he figured was safe, but it still was barely putting a dent in the pain _or_ the fever. Danny needed morphine, he needed antibiotics, he needed a goddamn hospital and a non-useless hiking partner who could get him those things. Colleen could probably have free-climbed the rockslide, jogged down the mountain, and would be bringing back help already.

"I ... I don't want ..." Danny pushed himself shakily up on his elbow and took in the scene, Ward with their limited supply of rope around him, trying to arrange their supplies in a way that would allow Danny to self-medicate without accidentally killing himself. "Ward, are you -- what are you doing?"

"Making plans." He wiped his hair out of his eyes with the back of his hand. He was exhausted and stressed and none of that was helping. He had spent the first night wrapped up in their sleeping bags with Danny, trying to keep him warm. By the second night it was obvious that keeping warm wasn't Danny's problem, the problem was being _too_ warm, but Danny was also restless and delirious, and Ward hadn't managed to get much sleep for going on three days now. Small potatoes next to Danny's problems, but it wasn't making it any easier to _think._

"Ward --"

"Okay, listen," Ward ordered, swiveling back around. "There are eleven ibuprofen left in the bottle, and you're going to take two every three hours, okay? I think there's enough battery left on your phone for the alarm to work for at least the first couple of doses, so I'm going to set it now. I'll leave you a note right there next to the phone, too. And I'm going to leave you all our remaining water --"

"Ward," Danny interrupted. He was trying to sit up, which was a really bad idea, judging from his little panting gasps of pain. Ward caught Danny's arm in a helpless attempt to calm him down, and Danny grabbed a handful of Ward's jacket, babbling. "Ward, don't -- don't try to -- what are you doing, are you going to _climb?"_

"I don't have wings, so, yeah." He was trying very hard not to think about it.

And Danny wasn't making it any easier. "You can't. It's too much. You'll slip. You'll die."

"Thanks for the pep talk. Super effective. I'm feeling very motivated."

"Ward, please." Danny looked frantic, clutching at Ward's shirt. He was, as always, much stronger than he looked, even in his weak, feverish state; Ward couldn't dislodge him. "Don't -- don't leave me alone."

Danny sounded _young,_ all of a sudden, and Ward didn't know if Danny was here and fully aware of what he was objecting to, or if he'd been thrown back into some younger memory, of K'un Lun or of his parents or -- God only knew, it wasn't like Danny had any shortage of people who'd left him. Everybody goddamn left him, one way or another.

"Danny." He closed his hands around Danny's trembling ones. "Danny, listen. I'm getting help, okay? You're only going to be alone for a little while, until --"

Danny twisted his hands around with sudden, desperate strength and clutched Ward's wrists. Ward had to grit his teeth; he didn't know if his left wrist was sprained or broken, but it didn't appreciate being grabbed onto.

"Ward, you can't. Please." Danny's eyes were fever-bright, but they fixed on him with burning intensity. "It's too high. You'll fall. You'll die. Don't do it."

... okay, so it wasn't just general separation anxiety; he was at least somewhat aware of where he was and what was happening to him. Ward made another attempt to peel him off. "I'm not going to fall, because you -- you're going to help me," he tried with desperate improvisation.

And that made Danny's grip loosen, enough for Ward to hastily get Danny's hands back down onto his sleeping bag where they belonged. ".... how?" Danny whispered, looking up at him with trust that Ward had in no way done anything to earn or deserve.

Yeah, how? Good question. "With ... chi," he extemporized wildly. "You'll be there with me every step of the way, okay? Guiding me, helping me find handholds, and all of that --" Complete metaphysical bullshit. "... stuff they taught you, all right? So you're going to stay down here and stay focused and _help me,_ okay?"

Danny's face screwed up like he wasn't quite sure of this logic but couldn't muster up enough brain cells to argue against it. "... okay?" he managed at last, faintly.

"Great." Ward patted Danny's chest in what he hoped was a reassuring way, got hastily out of reach, and made sure everything Danny needed was nearby. He hoped Danny didn't take all the ibuprofen at once, but it probably wasn't going to destroy his liver to take eleven in one go (... hopefully).

"Ward." Danny rallied again, trying to prop himself up.

"You're supposed to be focusing on chi stuff." He checked his phone one last time for a signal, then turned it off to save the battery. 

"I know, but ... Ward ..."

"I gotta go, Danny." Ward wound a rope around his waist. He was taking the bare minimum necessary, just their ropes and a couple of knives. He'd tried to figure out how to rig climbing gear from what they had with them, but it was useless; they hadn't come prepared for rock climbing, and it wasn't like he'd know how to use crampons or pitons or pitas or whatever else you were supposed to have.

He was going to have to wing it.

What else was new.

"Ward," Danny said urgently.

"If there's anything you need," Ward said, looking down at him, "speak now or forever hold your peace, got it?"

"You," Danny said, the world trailing off on a breath. "I need _you._ Be safe. Please."

Ward looked down at him and then ... god ... he knew he shouldn't let Danny get in grabbing range again, if he was ever going to get out of here, but he crouched down and hugged him. He could feel the heat in Danny's body, and also a disturbing fragility, as if Danny had lost weight noticeably just since they'd been down here.

Danny clung to him and pressed his face into Ward's shoulder. "_Please_ come back."

"The point is not for me to come back," Ward couldn't help pointing out into Danny's sweaty hair. "The point is for me to _not_ come back and send help instead."

"You're really fucking pedantic sometimes," Danny said into his shoulder. And Ward laughed, he couldn't help it. He laughed for what felt like the first time in days. And he loved this idiot, loved him so goddamn much he'd climb ten thousand caves if that's what it took to keep him safe.

"Stay here and think useful thoughts," he ordered, and Danny nodded against his shoulder, and Ward pressed a brief kiss to his hair like he might have done (if he hadn't been a complete asshole of a big brother) when Danny was just a kid, scared and feverish, clinging to him. And then he eased Danny back down onto the sleeping bags and turned his attention to perhaps the stupidest thing he'd ever done, which was really saying something.

*

In retrospect, Ward thought maybe Danny did actually somehow manage to do something with chi powers to help him, because there was no actual goddamn way he should have been able to do that without help.

The only thing he knew about climbing rocks was a long-ago lesson in tree climbing from ... not Harold, at least he didn't think so. Someone else. Danny's dad? Some kid at school? Danny himself? He could almost picture it, little tow-headed Danny earnestly giving an uncaring Ward a lesson in how to climb trees. But he didn't remember, not anymore; he just remembered _three points of contact._ Make sure you have a firm grip and both feet tucked into toeholds, then feel for a new grip, then make sure that's solid and feel out a new toehold ...

It was absolutely endless. Climbing was his entire world: sweat dripping in his eyes, his arms and thighs and back muscles quivering with fatigue. He'd wrapped up his bad wrist but the fingers on that side kept letting go, even when he gave them stern instructions not to.

He didn't look down.

He tried not to think.

He just climbed. And climbed. He found cracks to wedge himself into for short rests, fatigued muscles trembling, his mouth so dry it hurt. He really _should_ have brought water. But there wasn't much, and Danny needed it, and anyway, it was heavy.

After awhile it seemed like there had been nothing but this, the endless aching misery and thirst and fear, and worry for Danny driving him onward and upward, knowing every fresh handhold could be disastrous.

He was getting clumsy. Too tired to be careful. Rocks and dirt crumbled away under his feet and he clung to a small tree with its roots somehow anchored and then he just went on, too tired to be scared.

He didn't remember the last part of the climb. Eventually he realized he was sprawled on gritty bare ground, and it was dark, and he was so thirsty that it was a burning cramp in his throat. It took him awhile to realize that he wasn't on some kind of ledge, he was in the forest, and those were _trees_ against the _stars,_ and he was out.

He picked himself up to his knees, unable to quite acknowledge that he'd done it.

And then he staggered to his feet. It had taken them a day and a half to climb the mountain. Going down should be faster, right?

*

He didn't know what they thought in the village when some filthy, half-crazy American stumbled into town raving about sinkholes, because by that point he was delirious himself (staying hydrated rather than giving most of the water to Danny would've been a good idea, he thought later, flat on his back in the village clinic with an IV drip in his arm). He remembered only snatches of his stumbling progress into the village, and some of it was lurid nightmares of the trees turning to monsters with Harold's face, trying to grab him with their knotted hands, while he screamed at them about Danny and batted them away. He didn't know whether anyone in town had managed to get anything sensible out of him, but he woke in a bed with clean sheets, his hands wrapped up in bandages and his arm in a cast and an IV pole next to the bed.

He must have gone a little bit frantic, because the next thing he knew there was a nurse bending over him, gripping his arm and tutting over the blood where he'd torn out the IV. "Danny," he gasped, his throat raw, his lips cracking and bleeding when he tried to talk. "Danny, my brother -- American -- Brother? He's in a sinkhole up in the mountains -- _do you understand a word I'm saying --"_

The nurse said something he didn't understand and gripped his shoulders firmly, and turned him to the side. "Brother," she said, "American," ... and there was Danny, pale and fragile and _there_ and _alive,_ at least judging by the fact that it didn't make sense to hook up an IV to a corpse. 

Ward's heart flipped over and faltered and kept beating.

"Can I sit with him?" he asked quietly.

She didn't seem to understand, but she went and got a younger woman with a spiky hairdo and black lipstick, who spoke halting English with a distinct British accent. She managed to get across that if he would sit _here_ and drink _this_ and be quiet, he would be able to sit up until he wanted to lie down again.

So he drank a cup of water and a bowl of broth, sitting in a stiff-backed metal chair by Danny's bedside. He double-checked with quick pats that both of Danny's legs were still there, intact all the way down to the toes. Ward felt hazy and not quite all there himself. He tried brushing the tips of his fingers on the casted arm with his other, bandaged hand. He'd apparently turned his hands into hamburger climbing the rockslide, though he didn't remember any pain. Even the fingertips were raw and bruised. He could drink only by gripping the plastic cup between both palms, feeling like a toddler drinking from a sippy cup.

Danny gave a sudden, quiet gasp and turned his head to the side, and Ward set down his cup and reached out to lay a bandaged hand on Danny's chest.

"Danny? Hey ..."

"Ward," Danny gasped, blinking. "I ... we ...." He looked completely dazed, bruises standing out on his pale face. Slowly his gaze focused on Ward, and he caught at Ward's arm, flailing and uncoordinated. "Where ..."

"We're out, Danny," Ward said. He had to repeat it several times before Danny finally began to relax.

"Out," Danny whispered. His voice was dry and rasping. "You got me out."

"Well, kind of. I had help."

Danny patted at Ward's arm. It took Ward a moment to realize what he was trying to do, before he took Ward's hand in his, carefully cupped the bruised and bandaged fingers. "What happened? Did you ... do this climbing out?"

"I don't know," Ward said, a little impatiently; he didn't like the idea of Danny feeling guilty about it. "Maybe when we fell. Not sure."

Danny curled his hand very gently around Ward's sore fingers and drew Ward's hand against his cheek, and just held it there. "Saved me," he whispered.

"Mmm, yeah, not the first time if you'll recall, but I think the scales are still tilted your way considering all the attempts on your life way back when."

Danny grinned sleepily at him. "You're a good big brother, Ward."

"Let's save the value judgements for when you're not drugged to the gills, huh?"

Danny kept holding onto his hand and eventually fell asleep like that.

The Goth nurse came back to detach him from Danny and put him back to bed. "He's brother, yes?" she whispered, and Ward nodded. "I have three sister. Three," she demonstrated what he assumed was birth order with her fingers, "two, me, one. Little one, she is more trouble than _all_ the other."

"God, yes, _thank_ you. Someone who understands."

"She wants to marry ship captain. Go sail away to Australia."

"Typical."

"She is only sixteen!"

"I _know,_ right, but try telling _them_ that --"

So they talked for awhile about the general terrible-ness of younger siblings and commiserated on their shared failures to keep them in line.

("Put on leash!"

"I would if I could think of a way to keep it on him, trust me.")

Eventually they mutually decided that falling down a hole was worse than trying to elope with the captain of an Australian fishing boat, and the nurse laughed and looked around and slipped Ward half a chocolate bar and ducked out.

He nibbled on the chocolate and decided that he was looking forward to telling Danny (the captain and first mate of the USS Making New Friends) that _he'd_ made a new friend(TM) all by himself and it was based largely around the relatable experience of having annoying younger siblings.

*

In the morning, with Danny stabilized and his fever down, he was airlifted to the nearest big city for surgery. Ward got into town a few hours later, just in time to show up at the airport in a taxi to pick up Colleen.

To his absolute shock, she hugged him.

"So am I dying and no one told me, or ..."

"Shut up, Ward," Colleen said through a slightly fixed grin.

She didn't comment on his bandaged hands or the cast on his arm or the way he was moving, stiff and careful. At the hospital, they learned Danny was still in surgery.

"Do you have a hotel?" Colleen asked.

"No, I figured we'll just camp out in a park."

She gave him a long look.

"I just got into town. I don't know. Hell. Google something."

She did, flopping across two seats in the waiting room with her knee flung over the arm of the next one, and then showed him the hotel website and a map on her phone. She'd reserved a two-room suite using one of Danny's credit cards. Ward couldn't really fault her taste; Danny might like to live like a homeless person, but Colleen was clearly not one to let an advantage slip away.

The cab ride to the hotel took place largely in awkward silence. They hadn't actually interacted one-on-one since ... well ... ever. In fact, he thought the only significant conversations he'd ever had with Colleen without Danny or someone else acting as a buffer might have involved blackmailing her, way back in the early days.

No wonder it was hard to find things to talk about.

"So how's New York?" he said. "How's the, uh ... Fist?"

Colleen tipped her head back against the seat of the taxi and held up her hand, flexing it into a fist and then opening the fingers. "Okay, I guess. How's the round-the-world road trip?"

"Oh, I don't know, you've already been on a road trip with Danny, how was that one?"

"We didn't end up stuck in any pits," Colleen said thoughtfully. "On the other hand, the Hand tried to kill us a lot. So I guess it averages out."

Now it was his turn to give her a look.

"That was a joke," she said. "I thought you appreciated a morbid sense of humor."

"I don't think I appreciated what it's like from the outside."

To his surprise, she grinned at him, a quick flash of teeth and a crinkling around the eyes, and then the taxi pulled up at the hotel. Ward lugged both his and Danny's packs into the hotel, and Colleen handled the check-in. The room had air conditioning and decent-sized beds, and Colleen collapsed in one of the rooms to get a little sleep while they waited for the hospital to call them about Danny.

Ward got a large bottle of tea from a vending machine; he was still trying to hydrate. And then he sat at the table in the suite's common room and laid out games of solitaire he was too tired and dazed to pay attention to.

Colleen wandered in, rubbing at her eyes. "Can't sleep," she said, yawning. "My body doesn't know what time it is. Any news?"

Ward shook his head. "I'm flying in specialists from Rand, but they won't be here for awhile yet."

"I'm sure they have specialists here, Ward. This is a world-class hospital in a major city."

"Yes, well." He swept the cards together; he couldn't seem to concentrate. Shuffling was nearly impossible with his bandaged hands. "Soon they'll have more. Apparently our R&D labs have a next-generation version of the brace they used on Danny before. I'd say I can't believe he managed to break his other leg six months after he broke the first one, but ..." He shook his head.

"... it's Danny," Colleen said with a pallid ghost of a laugh.

"Says it all."

"If I could get in see him," she said, "I think I could help."

Ward looked up sharply from the cards. She was sitting on the couch with a bottle of water in one hand, her other hand dangling between her knees. She wore a tank top and the dragon tattoo was clearly visible, winding down her arm.

"How do you mean, help?"

"What do you think I mean? I assume Danny's told you the Iron Fist can do more than just punch things."

"You can heal a broken leg?" He felt strangely gutted. All that time in the pit, and ...

... and _nothing_, was the thing. Colleen had been on the Rand jet as soon as it had been possible to contact her, so it wasn't like he could have done anything differently. Rationally, he knew that. But here he'd been throwing money at specialists, emailing and calling people halfway around the world ... he didn't even know what he was feeling right now. He'd literally forgotten that Colleen could do all the same things Danny used to be able to do.

"I don't know!" Colleen said. "I haven't really done anything like that before. But it's Danny. I can try."

_Talk out your emotions,_ Bethany used to say. _Tell yourself what you're feeling. Give yourself permission to feel it._

Anger, was what he was feeling. A bitter, stupid, jealous anger. Because Colleen could help Danny in a way he couldn't. Because all those days down in the pit, Colleen was the one who should've been there, not him. And there was nothing any of them could do about it.

"Are you _smiling?"_ Colleen said, incredulous.

Was he? Maybe he was. "I don't know, I was just thinking about ... you know the serenity prayer from AA and the various A's, the one about accepting the things you can't change --"

"And finding the courage to change the things you can," Colleen said. "Yeah, I've heard it. I didn't know it was an AA thing."

"Sometimes it is." And it _sucked_, that thing when you wanted to help someone more than anything, and you couldn't. He'd had three days in a pit to accept _that,_ and he hadn't even come close.

But he could do something about it now. He got up and grabbed his jacket.

"Want to take a ride? Let's see if we can get you in there."

*

Hospitals were hospitals everywhere, no matter what. The languages were different, and the script on the signs, but every time he walked into one of them, Ward sank under a barrage of memories. Nothing good had ever happened to him in a hospital; he had to try not to drown in a mental cascade of Dad dying of cancer, of being strapped down while drug withdrawal burned him from the inside; of Danny fighting for his life that other time.

Danny was in recovery, they were told, and a nurse went to see if he could have visitors. Ward got a cup of coffee and sat down in the waiting area. Colleen joined him, after a moment.

Memories again. Waiting, that other time: Colleen and Misty and him. They hadn't talked. He'd exchanged a few words with Misty, a word or two with Colleen, but that was about it.

They were strangers, he thought, looking across at Colleen poking at magazines neither of them could read -- two strangers, intersecting at Danny. They never would have had anything to do with each other, otherwise; the only thing in the world they had in common was Danny, but they always _would_ have that in common.

Maybe Colleen's thoughts had been running along similar lines, because she looked up from a magazine open to a page with photos of bright-colored flowers and bridges, and said, "What have you and Danny been up to lately, anyway?"

"Falling in holes."

The familiar look of exasperation crossed her face, and it occurred to him only as the words left his mouth that he was, once again, setting fire to olive branches. He tried to scrape together the sincerity he had been cultivating, off and on, ever since Danny came back into his life and Joy left him. He was self-aware enough to know he guarded himself with sarcasm -- Bethany had been the first to point it out, but he'd recognized it before then -- and he was aware, too, that a lifetime of deflecting and guarding and hiding everything he felt (even, frequently, from himself) had left him with a woefully underdeveloped ability to have a serious conversation.

Especially at times like this, when reaching for a wellspring of sincerity threatened to unleash a gushing flood of worry about Danny. Easier, far easier, to skim along at the surface level, make lousy jokes, and refuse to admit that the one thing they had in common actually _was_ something they had in common.

But he was trying not to be that person anymore.

"Sorry," he said. "You know, I'm a dick."

Colleen's smile was faint and tight. "I hadn't noticed."

"Ha. No. You know, I'm jealous of you because you can help Danny and I can't."

Now she looked truly startled. "It's not a competition, Ward."

"I _know_ that. And it's not really that kind of jealousy anyway. I want to help," he said quietly, hands clasped on his cup of coffee, looking across the narrow waiting room at her, hard-backed plastic chair digging into his spine. "And I can't, but _you_ can, so tell me if there's anything I can do to help _you."_

After a long, surprised pause, she smiled again, more sincerely this time. "Is this where the accepting what you can't change part comes in?"

"Maybe it's the other part. The changing things one. I tend to lose track."

"You did help, though," she said quietly, leaning forward. "You got him out."

"I also got him _in,_ did anyone mention that? He fell in saving me."

Colleen opened her mouth, started to say something, then hesitated and looked down at the magazine she'd rolled up in her hands, then back at him again. "Well, I guess he thought you were worth saving, then."

Somehow he'd never turned it around and thought about it like that. 

"I could try practicing on your wrist, if you want me to," she added. 

He'd heard Danny talk about chi-healing enough times to have a vague idea of the downsides and drawbacks. "No. It'll ... run down your chi, or something, right? Save it for Danny."

Colleen nodded. They didn't talk any more, but the silence was oddly comfortable, and he was still circling around what she'd said about Danny, testing its edges, when the nurse came back to tell them that Mr. Rand could have visitors now.

They both got up, and then Ward hung back, but Colleen turned back and jerked her head toward the swinging doors with a pointed look and a little bit of a smile, and he followed.

It had been a good 24 hours since Ward had last seen Danny, and he thought it made sense that Danny would have started looking better in that time, but if anything he looked worse: pale as the sheets under him, lips cracked and eyes sunk in shadows like bruises. But he was awake, and perked up visibly at the sight of Colleen.

"Hey," he whispered. Colleen sat beside him on the bed and leaned carefully to kiss him and brush his tousled, sweat-damp hair back from his forehead.

"You look like hell," she murmured, and Danny grinned, though it looked like it must've hurt with his dry lips.

"I thought you're supposed to say I'm a sight for sore eyes or something," he murmured.

"Well, you are." She tangled her hand in his curls, brushed her fingers down the side of his face. "And you also look like twenty miles of bad road."

"Where's Ward?"

"Ward's here," Ward said, and he sat cautiously on the other side of the bed, flanking Danny between them. He curled his fingers over Danny's without being prompted this time. Colleen's words still ran around and around in his head: _I guess he thought you were worth saving ..._

"Hi," Danny whispered, and he grinned and leaned his head against Colleen's hand and just looked _happy,_ as distressingly terrible as he looked in all other ways.

"How's the leg?" Ward asked, glancing at the sheets. Danny continued to have two visible legs, so that was good.

"Dunno. Can't feel a whole lot right now."

"Colleen thinks she can heal you."

"Colleen is not at all sure of that," Colleen said, but the look she gave him was more light irritation than actual anger.

"Oohhh," Danny said, and something cleared in his dazed expression, sharpening. "I could walk you through it, I bet."

Ward set his hand down with a light squeeze, and got up, and left them to it.

*

He wandered the hospital, stared at things in the tiny gift shop, wandered down to the street and walked for awhile. It was late afternoon, which seemed surprising somehow, as if it should be either much earlier or much later. He felt as if he'd come unglued from time, like he was jet-lagged without having really gone anywhere. He was restless, twitchy. His bruises ached. He couldn't remember the last time he'd eaten.

He would like to find a bar, but he wasn't going to.

Instead he bought a bento box type of thing and a Coke at a corner convenience store and ate outside, standing up. He could go back to the hotel for a shave and a shower, but what the hell, he'd been looking like a homeless person for days; why stop now? Instead he wandered back to the hospital and found his way back to Danny's room.

He stopped in the doorway. The two of them were tangled up together, Colleen stretched alongside Danny on top of the blankets, her face tucked into his neck and ponytail spilling across his pillow. She was fully dressed, but there was still something impossibly intimate about it.

Danny raised his head a little. "Hey," he said softly, and Ward, who had been planning a hasty retreat, instead came into the room and quietly pulled a chair over to the bedside. Colleen slept on, oblivious.

"You look better," Ward said softly. Danny had more color in his face, and a more alert look in his eyes.

"I feel better," Danny whispered back. He sounded better too.

"Did she actually do it?"

"Work in progress," Danny said quietly. "She's going to need to sleep for awhile, and then she'll need to eat. It really wipes you out."

Ward nodded. He wasn't quite sure what to do with his hands, and then Danny reached out and caught hold of one of them and guided it back to rest on top of the blankets with Danny's fingers hooked in his, so okay, that took care of that, then.

"How're you doin'?" Danny whispered.

"What, me? Oh, I'm great."

"Ward."

_Maybe he thinks you're worth saving._

"Hanging in there," Ward said. He took a breath. "Physically, I'm fine. A little dehydration, a few bruises, broke a couple bones in my wrist. Emotionally ..."

_I should've gotten you out earlier. But ... that's not really my fault. We tried. We both did. We did okay._

_If I hadn't been there, you might not have fallen in, but then again maybe trying to save me is what stopped you from falling 200 feet straight down, so that's something too._

_(Maybe he thinks you're worth saving.)_

"Emotionally?" Danny prompted, and his gaze was steady and clear on Ward. Listening, intently and thoroughly, nonjudgmental and just _there_. 

Like always.

"Emotionally, I'm pretty good too," Ward said, and he wasn't even lying. He squeezed Danny's hand, and sat with him, with both of them, for a good long while, as Danny fell back asleep and Colleen snored quietly against Danny's neck -- just sitting there, sharing in their peace and calm. Accepting things. Being okay.


End file.
